Dragon Quest Treasures is a pretty overlooked spinoff that launched exclusively for Nintendo Switch last year. It features two characters from Dragon Quest XI, Erik, and Maya, as youths whisked away from their Viking caregivers(?) to the land of Draconia, where vast treasure is abound.
The story was more of a backdrop that gradually became more involved yet was never the primary focus. Instead, the gameplay took centerstage, with exploration across several enormous landmasses. On Switch, I found Dragon Quest Treasures to be a relatively enjoyable experience, mainly mitigated by questionable music implementation and overly simple combat. Still, it’s an undeniably well-crafted spinoff with a lot of heart and an impressive volume of content to pursue.
Now, after playing the shadow-dropped Steam port, my thoughts remain largely the same, though I’ve had a far more pleasant time playing the game here than the Switch. For one, while the title performed well on the Switch, it definitely felt like its world could thrive far more on more powerful platforms. And indeed, it does. On PC, you have various settings you can play around with, one of the most prominent being framerate caps. You can choose between 30, 60, 90, 120, 144, and uncapped framerate options, enabling excellent customizability, even for those with weaker PCs.
V-Sync presence can also be turned off, as well as a slew of graphical options, notably bloom effects, and screen space reflections. Further, you can alter the intensities of antialiasing, ambient occlusion, foliage density, and the general LOD (level of detail). Lastly of note in the graphical options menu is the ability to change levels of the shadow and texture details, as well as the texture filtering. Summatively, none of these customization options are particularly groundbreaking in any which way, but they can all be applied on-the-fly without needing to re-open the game. So, that’s highly appreciated for the sake of swift finalizations.
Of similar convenience is the controller customization. You can choose between a general Xbox or DualShock controller type and then re-map every button if you like. These alterations, too, can be switched on-the-fly. One final note regarding the options is the camera speed. Personally, the default three out of five notches feels too leisurely, so I recommend raising that up to the max for both the vertical and horizontal assignments. During action sequences, you’ll be glad to have this greater leeway.
My time playing Dragon Quest Treasures on PC has been entirely smooth, with no noticeable frame drops or other detectable issues. My computer is also roughly half a decade old, so unless your machine is twice as old or so, you likely have nothing to worry about.
If you’re someone who skipped out on Dragon Quest Treasures because of performance concerns with its Switch exclusivity or just didn’t happen to pick it up because of the seemingly never-ending waves of video game releases, then this PC port should be your definite go-to. The game is also fully Steam Deck verified, letting you experience the title in a similar way as it was on the Switch; the best of both worlds, as hit star Hannah Montana once said.
With a more traditional return to the Dragon Quest Monsters series releasing later this year via Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince, Dragon Quest Treasures can be seen as a simpler and moderately delightful action-oriented deviation of those spinoffs. It can lose its staying power in especially lengthy play sessions, but there’s a genuinely addictive gameplay loop here with tons of variety to sink dozens of hours of time into. Hopefully, the game finds a favorable crowd on this new platform.
